RE: Alternatives to Adobe CS2 [Was: Unicode Support in Adobe CS2]

From: Mustafa Jabbar (mjabbar@bangla.net)
Date: Sat May 07 2005 - 00:04:45 CDT

  • Next message: Mustafa Jabbar: "RE: Bengali sort order"

    These information are really excellent. In fact I am looking for a Word
    Processor-probably OpenOffice supports Unicode in Bangla, a Photo Editor
    like Photosahop which supports Unicode with Bangla, a Illustration Tool with
    Unicode Bangla Support and a pagemakeup software with Unicode and Bangla. In
    fact I wnat to repalce Office, Photoshop, Iluustrator and Quark/Indesign.
    On the other hand is there any Video Editin, Animation software with Unicode
    support.
    I shall prefer Windows as I am familiar with its interface. I am also
    willing to use MacOS-X for the same purpose. As I am not familiar with Linux
    I want to have a GUI where comamnds are not to be used. Than I might look
    for Linux.
    Is there anyone who has tested the products and can ensure that the whole
    thing will work professionaly?
    Mustafa Jabbar

    -----Original Message-----
    From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On
    Behalf Of Edward H. Trager
    Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 9:39 PM
    To: unicode@unicode.org
    Cc: Mustafa Jabbar
    Subject: Re: Alternatives to Adobe CS2 [Was: Unicode Support in Adobe CS2]

    Hi, Mustafa,

    In as much as Adobe does not currently support Indic script layout properly,
    you might want to investigate whether or not one of the following Open
    Source products
    can meet your needs:

     1) Inkscape

        http://www.inkscape.org

        Inkscape is an open source drawing tool with capabilities similar to
    Illustrator,
        Freehand, and CorelDraw. It uses the W3C standard Scalable Vector
    Graphics (SVG)
        format, so illustrations done in Inkscape should be exportable to these
    other
        programs.

        Inkscape use the Pango layout engine which supports the layout of Indic
    and
        Indic-derived scripts. The following chart shows which complex text
    layout
        scripts were supported in Pango 1.8 as of December, 2004:

         http://eyegene.ophthy.med.umich.edu/iuc27/html/img24.html

         A bug I filed with the Inkscape developers in December regarding
         positioning of over-the-consonant and under-the-consonant
         vowels and tone marks for Thai (which would most likely also affect
    other Indic
         scripts like Devanagari and Bengali) was reported as fixed and closed
    on March 10, 2005.
         I have not yet personally had a chance to verify the reported fix.

         Inkscape is available for Linux and Windows. I believe some people are
    working
         on a port for Mac OS X.

     2) Scribus

        http://www.scribus.org.uk

        Scribus in an open source desktop publishing tool (DTP) which now also
    has commercial support
        available (from one company in Massachusetts, USA, and one other in
    Luxembourg so I guess USA and
        Europe are covered).

        Indic support is apparently quite new, there might be some bugs:

     
    http://www.scribus.org.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid
    84

        I am not seeing any Windows binaries, so probably one has to have a
    Linux box. In any case, the
        Indic support is I believe only currently available from development
    version 1.3.1 on, which almost
        certainly is only available in a Linux format.

    - Ed Trager
      Bioinformatics
      Kellogg Eye Center
      Univ. of Michigan
      Ann Arbor, USA

    On Wednesday 2005.05.04 09:42:54 +0600, Mustafa Jabbar wrote:
    > Dear Eric,
    > Thank you very much for your reply. I also understand that your software
    > runs on MacOS and Linux too and you use your proprietory way of displaying
    > Unicode Characters. But you also use APIs from Windows and it might be
    > easier to use Uniscribe for Wiondows.
    > In my opinion Adobe can get an extra advantage ( I know they are already
    > ahead of everybody in creativity) by supprting Unicode as all Adobe
    software
    > are creativity products. Typography is a big issue in this creativity
    works.
    > As Unicode gives the best typography for Indic languages, people will be
    > definitely be going one step ahead with Adobe products with Unicode
    support
    > for Indic languages.
    > I shall request through you to the policy makers of Adobe to consider the
    > issue seriously.
    > As a Adobe product user and Indic Language solution provider I wish we can
    > do better with Unicode with Indic Languages support.
    > Thanks and regards
    > Mustafa Jabbar
    >
    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On
    > Behalf Of Eric Muller
    > Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2005 10:39 PM
    > To: 'Unicode List'
    > Subject: Re: Unicode Support in Adobe CS2
    >
    > Mustafa Jabbar wrote:
    >
    > >Dear Eric,
    > >As I understand Windows XP SP has a .dll which is responsible for display
    > of
    > >Unicode Glyphs and Codes.
    > >
    > As Chris mentionned, we use our own software for that (consider that our
    > applications also run on MacOS, as well as a number of Unix platforms
    > for some of them).
    >
    > > But we have found that Adobe applications only
    > >displays ?,if the code is beyond 256, the glyphas are not displayed.
    > >
    > This is not my experience with InDesign, Illustrator, PhotoShop, Acrobat
    > (to name only those I use). May be you are using an old application such
    > as PageMaker?
    >
    > >Indic languages have almost 50% of the world's polpulation.
    > >Can Adobe ignore it?
    > >
    > >
    > Because of our policy about product announcements, I cannot tell you
    > whether future versions of specific products will support Indic scripts.
    > I surely hope we will do so, but I am just a lowly engineer with little
    > influence on our product decisions.
    >
    > Eric.
    >
    > PS: your clock is fast by about a month.
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat May 07 2005 - 00:06:31 CDT